Chinese Solar Power Mogul Doubles Wealth Despite U.S. Forced Labor Sanctions

Chinese solar power company Hoshine Silicon Industry was targeted by U.S. sanctions in June 2021 for allegedly using forced labor to create its products. A little over a year later, Hoshine stock is up 111 percent, the personal fortune of founder Luo Liguo has doubled, and the Luo family is spending a billion dollars to expand the company’s presence in Xinjiang province, home of the enslaved Uyghur Muslims.

Bloomberg News on Thursday argued the “continued success” of Hoshine illustrates the limits of sanctions and casts doubt on the effectiveness of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA), which sets tougher standards for importers to prove goods from Xinjiang are not tainted by slavery.

The evidence against Hohsine was particularly disturbing although, of course, it wasn’t good enough for the Chinese government, which denies the Uyghur genocide and insists there is no slavery whatsoever in Xinjiang, which its residents call East Turkistan.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in June 2021 his agency had “information reasonably indicating that Hoshine uses forced labor to produce its silica-based products.”

U.S. investigators found two major indicators of forced labor in Hoshine’s operations: “intimidation and threats, and restriction of movement.” Chinese state documents showed the company participated in government programs known to use coercion against Uyghur workers and subject them to political indoctrination.

DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order against Hoshine’s products, requiring all shipments to be detained upon arrival at U.S. ports. Mayorkas presented the order as proof “the United States will not tolerate modern-day slavery in our supply chains.”

“Forced labor is a human rights abuse that hurts vulnerable workers, weakens the global economy, and exposes consumers to unethically made merchandise,” added senior CBP official Troy Miller.

Even as the Withhold Release Order was issued, industry analysts said it would be nearly impossible to enforce because Hoshine is a dominant supplier to the solar panel industry, so slavery could taint nearly every “green energy” supply chain. 

Some analysts said it would be simpler to assume that every silicon product emanating from Xinjiang included some Hoshine materials, and could therefore be presumed tainted by forced labor.

Xinjiang has become the heart of the solar panel industry because its abundant supplies of coal are useful for generating the heat needed to make the green technology that will supposedly make the industry less dependent on coal.

Cheap energy — plus ultra-cheap labor extracted from what China absurdly describes as “vocational education and training centers” for the captive Uyghur population — help Hoshine shave at least 15 percent off its prices for silicon products. Some of Hoshine’s facilities are literally located next door to concentration camps. The company’s literature brags about participating in “anti-poverty employment programs” that drag rural Uyghurs into its factories against their will and even gleefully details coercive measures used against the victims.

According to the Bloomberg report on Thursday, Hoshine and other Chinese companies control too much of the solar panel industry to be restrained by sanctions, and they have little trouble finding alternative buyers when American scruples get in their way. 

American scruples did not really get in the way all that much because the taxpayer-subsidy-guzzling green energy industry is utterly addicted to Chinese silicon. Bloomberg’s experts convincingly argued the sanctions against Hoshine harmed U.S. green energy companies more than the Chinese corporation — which, as noted, is booming and expanding its operations:

After the sanctions were announced, US solar imports plummeted. Between July 2021 and May, they were $4.1 billion, down 24% from the same period the year before, according to BloombergNEF data.

“The US is just a problematic market,” Paula Mints, founder of SPV Market Research, a San Francisco-based solar research firm, said citing the sanctions as well as an ongoing investigation into whether some solar panel makers have illegally avoided tariffs.

While the US solar industry was suffering, Hoshine enjoyed its best year since it went public in 2017. Even as US sanctions were rippling through the solar supply chain, the price of industrial silicon surged 300% last fall after producers in another part of China were forced to cut output to save power amid a nationwide coal shortage. Chinese solar exports overall rose 71% to $35.6 billion from June 2021 through May this year. Germany, Spain and the Netherlands were among the largest buyers, along with Brazil, Japan and Australia.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act was initially thought to be a major problem for the textiles industry since Xinjiang produces so much cotton, and supply chains for cotton can be difficult to trace. Analysts soon came to see the Xinjiang solar industry as even more problematic — and its goods are much more difficult to alternatively source than cotton. 

Solar panels are what will break the back of the worldwide movement against slave labor because the politically powerful green energy industry must have Xinjiang solar panels. With billions of dollars in sales revenue and taxpayer subsidies on the line, green industries will eventually convince themselves to believe Uyghur land is dotted with “vocational training centers” that happen to feature guard towers and razor wire fences.